https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-04-ketogenic-diet-severe-mental-illness.html
For people living with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, standard treatment with antipsychotic medications can be a double-edged sword. While these drugs help regulate brain chemistry, they often cause metabolic side effects such as insulin resistance and obesity, which are distressing enough that many patients stop taking the medications.
Now, a pilot study led by Stanford Medicine researchers has found that a ketogenic diet not only restores metabolic health in these patients as they continue their medications but it further improves their psychiatric conditions. The results, published in Psychiatry Research, suggest that dietary intervention can be a powerful aid in treating mental illness.
"It's very promising and very encouraging that you can take back control of your illness in some way, aside from the usual standard of care," said Shebani Sethi, MD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the first author of the new paper.
The senior author of the paper is Laura Saslow, Ph.D., associate professor of health behavior and biological sciences at the University of Michigan.
Sethi, who is board-certified in obesity and psychiatry, remembers when she first noticed the connection. As a medical student working in an obesity clinic, she saw a patient with treatment-resistant schizophrenia whose auditory hallucinations quieted on a ketogenic diet.
That prompted her to dig into the medical literature. There were only a few decades-old case reports on using the ketogenic diet to treat schizophrenia, but there was a long track record of success in using ketogenic diets to treat epileptic seizures.
"The ketogenic diet has been proven to be effective for treatment-resistant epileptic seizures by reducing the excitability of neurons in the brain," Sethi said. "We thought it would be worth exploring this treatment in psychiatric conditions."
A few years later, Sethi coined the term metabolic psychiatry, a new field that approaches mental health from an energy conversion perspective.
...
The psychiatric benefits were also striking. On average, the participants improved 31% on a psychiatrist rating of mental illness known as the clinical global impressions scale, with three-quarters of the group showing clinically meaningful improvement. Overall, the participants also reported better sleep and greater life satisfaction.
Journal Reference:
Shebani Sethi et al, Ketogenic Diet Intervention on Metabolic and Psychiatric Health in Bipolar and Schizophrenia: A Pilot Trial, Psychiatry Research (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2024.115866
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Thursday April 04, @09:32AM (3 children)
Which makes sense to me. A sound soul dwells within a sound mind and a sound body. I wonder what would happen if they started to workout as well?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 04, @01:09PM (2 children)
Makes sense to me on an entirely different level. Ketogenic diet is as effective in reducing epileptic seizures as the best meds available (in other words: not very, but somewhat.)
Ketosis is a significant state change compared with the fat and happy way we mostly live today, very different blood chemistry, and it has significant (normal, naturally occurring) effects on brain function.
It's like fixing an old tube radio or television: sometimes a solid whack on the case will restore a loose connection.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Cyrix6x86 on Friday April 05, @05:51AM (1 child)
I did it for 15 years and had very good HDL to LDL cholesterol levels.
I stopped, ate "normally" for six months, and my LDL skyrocketed. Despite portion control, I ended up in the worst physical shape of my adult life.
Back on the train, I guess.
The problem is that ketogenic diet is unsustainable at our current population levels without some groundbreaking innovation in production of foodstuff.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 05, @12:17PM
Oh, ketosis is easy: just stop eating altogether. Sure, you've gotta eat sometime, but if you think back pre-agricultural - how did we eat then? Probably not three square meals every single day.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04, @12:40PM (6 children)
You say that like the voice in my head is a _bad_ thing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Thursday April 04, @01:33PM (2 children)
I AM the voice in my head!
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday April 04, @07:53PM (1 child)
heh heh heh
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by cereal_burpist on Saturday April 06, @03:32AM
https://genius.com/Deicide-halls-of-warship-lyrics [genius.com]
\m/
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday April 04, @02:01PM
The best way to greet strangers at the front door is with the receiver in your hand, and a cloth cleaning it, while saying "the voices told me that I should clean the guns today."
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1) by nostyle on Thursday April 04, @02:20PM
I've always figured the auditory hallucination is okay as long as you give proper citation and attribution,
--
-Don McLean, American Pie
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Thursday April 04, @11:41PM
Mine is snoring.